Climbers rescued after fall on Rainier

Slide leaves two injured; one suffers hypothermia

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Just days after a rock slide in the North Cascades National Park killed three climbers, a climbing team on Mount Rainier got into serious trouble and three climbers had to be rescued.

Two climbers in the seven-member team were injured in a fall at 13,500 feet on a steep and icy slope Tuesday and had to be airlifted off Rainier yesterday morning, said Mike Gauthier, head climbing ranger at Mount Rainier National Park.

A third climber suffered hypothermia and had to be helped down the mountain, reaching the bottom in the late afternoon.

Most of the climbers are from the Seattle area, Gauthier said.

The team got into trouble Tuesday after the climbers reached the summit and began to descend around 4 p.m., Gauthier said. That's a late start, considering most teams are back at camp by 1 p.m., he said.

The members had split into two rope teams, one with three and the other four climbers. While traversing a slope, one climber in the team of four slipped, dragging the others down the mountainside.

The last climber in the rope team was able to bury an ice ax into the slope and stop the group's fall, Gauthier said.

By the time they stopped, climbers Tom Labrie, 50, and Theresa Fielding, 31, were injured. Labrie had broken his lower leg and Fielding had sprained her ankle.

Doug Smart, 56, was leading the seven-member team, all of whom were reported to be members of The Mountaineers club, Gauthier said. Smart decided to stay behind with Labrie and Fielding, and the rest descended to their camp at Emmons Flats, at about 9,800 feet.

Two Rainier climbing rangers, Jeremy Shank and David Gottlieb, had been watching the team descend the mountain from several thousand feet below. The two had just returned from a round-trip rescue operation that morning.

When they saw the slide and then little movement, the two repacked their gear and started back up the mountain.

"They meant to set up tents and take care of the injured patients," Gauthier said. "By the time they got there (around 10 p.m.), the third climber had hypothermia and also needed help."

The next morning at 8:20 a.m. a helicopter from the Oregon National Guard plucked the injured climbers off the mountain and the rangers walked out with Smart.

"We've had a number of close calls this year," Gauthier said. "If there wouldn't have been someone there to go up and sit with these people, one of them would have died, if not all three of them."

Meanwhile, memorials for the three climbers killed Sunday in the North Cascades have been scheduled for tonight in Seattle and Tuesday in Tacoma, according to The Mountaineers club Web site.